The Annual Status of Education Report (Aser) has made a disturbing revelation: Pakistan is second in global ranking of out of school children. Around 57 percent of children between the ages of 3 to 5 are not enrolled in any school in rural areas and 65 percent of mothers are illiterate. A nation that is unable to educate its mothers and ensure a steady rise in enrolment rates of its children in schools is unlikely to reduce health costs, with illiterate mothers unaware of basic hygiene that would protect the health of her family, or enhance productivity through an educated and skilled citizenry.
Secretary General of the United Nations Ban Ki Moon while attending the World Economic Forum at Davos last month, also attended by Prime Minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani, stated "investing in the health of women and girls is the right thing to do and the smart thing to do for national economies and global stability."
Allocation for both health and education prior to the implementation of the eighteenth amendment when these two sectors were handed over to the provinces was well below the United Nations recommendation of 2 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In addition the development component of the education budget has invariably been drastically slashed during times of fiscal distress which the present government has been grappling with for the past four years. Western countries invest between 5 to 7 percent of their GDP in education however the figures for South Asian countries show that Pakistan performed well below the regional average: India spends around 4 percent of GDP on education, Nepal 3.4 percent, Bangladesh 2.4 percent and even resource constrained Bhutan spent 5.2 percent while Pakistan has, at most, spent no more than 1.8 percent on education.
Subsequent to the eighteenth constitutional amendment the situation has worsened as provinces simply do not have the capacity in terms of resources as well as manpower to effectively strengthen their education and health sectors. To blame provinces for not accepting the available manpower to run these sectors more efficiently - manpower that is at present parked in a federal manpower pool awaiting appointment - is a charge that is easily countered by the provincial authorities struggling to meet the massive rise in their federally directed salary bills (the budget for 2010-101 envisaged a doubling of salaries of civilian and military personnel while the 2011-12 budget envisaged a further escalation of 15 percent in civil servant salaries). What is ironic is that those who are responsible for this appalling state of affairs in terms of poor allocations to education and health have opted to send their own children abroad for higher education and go for frequent check ups to foreign countries.
Aser also reported that out of all those enrolled in Pakistan 67.6 percent were in government schools, 29 percent in private schools, 2.7 percent in madrassahs and 0.4 percent in other institutions. If past precedence is anything to go by one would assume that the government, if it decides to take note of these appalling statistics at all, will vociferously deny them and challenge the veracity of the survey sample that consisted of 48,646 villages across 84 rural districts as a reflection of a national trend. It is also unlikely that parliament, including the opposition members, will bother to take note of these statistics as our politicians, PPP and its coalition partners as well as PML (N), remain focused on the next general elections.